NEWS
Liquid Telecom
inaugurates
subsea cable
landing station
Paratus extends coverage
across Africa
L
iquid Telecom South Africa, part of the
leading pan-African telecoms group
Liquid Telecom, together with a consortium
of telecommunication companies, has
officially inaugurated the landing station of
the Melting Pot Indianoceanic Submarine
System (METISS) at Umbogotwini in
KwaZulu-Natal. The Project is expected to be
completed and operational by July 2020.
Dr Angus Hay, General Manager for Africa
Data Centres Southern Africa, said: “Everything
we do is driven by a simple yet powerful
belief that everyone in Africa has the right
to be connected. The METISS subsea fibre
optic cable underscores the company’s
commitment to provide high-speed
connectivity to every African on the continent.”
Following an agreement in 2018 with a
consortium of telcos, including Canal+
Télécom, CEB Fibernet, Emtel, SRR and
Telma, Liquid Telecom South Africa has
provided the landing station in KwaZulu-
Natal. It will host and manage the
submarine cable while also providing fibre
backhaul to Teraco. “This partnership with
Liquid Telecom is an important step for
connecting people and economies of the
Indian Ocean islands to South Africa which
is among the major Internet hubs in Africa,”
added Xavier Hemesse, METISS Chairman.
Liquid Telecom has been investing heavily
across the continent where it operates
Africa’s largest independent fibre network,
spanning almost 70,000km. In South Africa,
the company recently unveiled its new
core network that offers 99.999% uptime,
responding to customer demand for extra
bandwidth and vastly improved reliability.
P
aratus, a leading telecoms operator
with operational offices in six African
countries, has now implemented
additional routes for redundancy and is in
the process of an aggressive rollout plan,
building even more routes across the
region to ensure maximum uptime for
clients using this route.
The company reported in August that it
had finally completed a terrestrial east
and west coast of Africa connection
between the WACS undersea cable
in Swakopmund, Namibia and Dar es
Salaam, Tanzania.
Paratus Group COO, Schalk Erasmus, says
the route extends to 4,160 kilometres,
is fully operational under one single
Autonomous System Number (ASN) and
boasts a Round Trip Time (RTT) of 62ms.
“Connecting land-locked countries that
do not have access to undersea cable
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INTELLIGENTCIO
systems, with much-needed capacity is
critical to ensure that we leverage the
infrastructure investment we have made
across the African region,” he said.
Paratus is currently in the process to
complete the Maputo link, which will
not only connect into the Trans-Kalahari
Fiber (TKF) route which already extends
through various countries in SADC, but
will also be the second east to west coast
route completed by the operator after
completion of the initial route from Dar
es Salaam.
“Africa is a continent with countless
opportunities and we believe that we
need to harness this potential to see
more growth across the continent,”
added Erasmus.
“It is evident that investment in
infrastructure does show growth in the
economy and are inextricably linked.”
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